[103.09] An Experiment for Simulated Detection of Earth-Size Planetary Transits

The concept for detection of Earth-size planets by looking
for transits has been described by Borucki and Summers
(1984). A space mission for detecting hundreds of Earth-size
planets has been described by Koch, et al. (1998). The
method depends on reliably detecting a relative change in
brightness of order 8x10-5. Prior laboratory measurements
have demonstrated this level of relative precision using
CCDs (Robinson, et al., 1995, Jenkins, et al., 1997). A
higher fidelity experiment is now being constructed to
detect simulated Earth-size transits using a flight-type
CCD. In addition, the experiment incorporates many of the
major confounding factors which could affect the detection
capability including: spacecraft jitter, a realistic star
background, thermal changes, stellar variability, cosmic-ray
hits, etc. Details of the experiment are presented including
the method for producing the equivalent of earth-size
transit signals.